Behind the Jersey

Chapter 1

Twenty-eight years old. Leading scorer on a minor league hockey team that most people had never heard of.

Living above The Bread Basket in the town where he'd grown up, in a studio apartment with a kitchenette the size of a closet and a bathroom where the shower handle came off if you weren't careful.

This wasn't how it was supposed to go.

Below him, through the ancient floorboards, he heard the first sounds of his neighbor's morning routine.

A door opening. Water running. The rhythmic thump of what might have been dough being kneaded, or maybe she was just really aggressive with her breakfast prep.

He'd lived above The Bread Basket for three years and he'd never seen her do anything aggressive, but then again, he'd never seen her do much of anything beyond take orders and smile at customers through the window.

On the screen, Shane was talking to Joey, the kid who worshipped him.

Something about a man's gotta be what he is.

Jake's dad used to quote this movie, back before the heart attack took him when Jake was twenty-two.

Back when there was still time to prove that all those early morning drives to practice, all those missed family dinners, all that sacrifice, had been worth something.

His phone buzzed. A text from Marcus: still up?

Jake didn't respond. Marcus knew the answer.

Instead, he levered himself off the couch, his left shoulder sending up its familiar protest. Six years since the surgery and it still ached when he was stressed.

Which, lately, was always. He moved to the kitchen—three steps from the couch, basically—and opened the fridge.

Leftover Chinese food from Tuesday. A protein shake that had expired last week.

Half a sandwich from Mac's Tavern that he didn't remember buying.

He grabbed the protein shake and drank it anyway.

Through the wall—the thin, probably-not-up-to-code wall that separated his apartment from the one next door—he heard something crash, followed by a muffled curse. His other neighbor, the one he actually shared a wall with. The noisy one.

Jake had never seen this neighbor either.

Never even knew their name. But he knew their schedule almost as well as he knew his own insomnia patterns.

They got home late—midnight, 1 AM, sometimes later.

They moved around for hours. They dropped things.

They listened to music that bled through the walls at 2 AM. They apparently never slept.

Jake understood the feeling.

He checked his phone again: 4:48 AM. Time to get moving if he wanted to beat the sunrise to the rink.

Coach Tommy liked to say that preparation separated good players from great ones, but Jake knew better.

Preparation was just what you did when you couldn't sleep, when you couldn't sit still, when the walls of your studio apartment felt like they were closing in and the only thing that made sense was the ice.

He pulled on his practice gear—old sweatpants, a Timber Falls Wolves hoodie that had been through three seasons and had started to pill at the elbows, his lucky beanie that Marcus said made him look like a dock worker.

In the bathroom, he splashed water on his face and looked at himself in the mirror.

Twenty-eight. Dark hair that needed a cut, stubble that had crossed from "rugged" to "homeless" somewhere around Tuesday, hazel eyes with shadows underneath that never quite went away anymore.

The scar through his left eyebrow from a fight in high school—back when he thought fighting made him tough, before he learned that the really hard thing was just showing up every day.

Through the wall, something else clattered. Jake paused, listening. His mysterious neighbor was apparently having a rough morning.

He should probably feel bad for them. Instead, he just felt tired.

The drive to the rink took seven minutes.

Jake knew because he'd timed it hundreds of times, trying to find the optimal route, the perfect moment to leave that would get him there just as the sun started to crack over the mountains.

Timber Falls, Vermont in November was all bare trees and gray skies, the kind of cold that sank into your bones and stayed there.

Most of the tourists were gone now, the leaf-peepers and weekend hikers packed away until spring.

What was left was just the town itself: 8,500 people who all knew each other, for better or worse.

Mostly worse, in Jake's experience.

The Timber Falls Ice Center sat at the edge of downtown, a squat brick building that housed one regulation rink, a small workout room, and a locker room that smelled like it hadn't been deep-cleaned since 1987.

Jake had learned to skate here when he was four.

Had played youth hockey here, high school hockey here.

Had left for the NHL at eighteen, convinced he'd never come back except to visit.

Had come back at twenty-five, tail between his legs, shoulder held together with surgical pins and shattered dreams. Three years of failed comebacks, minor league tryouts that went nowhere, and finally accepting that his body would never be what it was.

The parking lot was empty. It always was at this hour.

Jake grabbed his gear bag from the passenger seat and headed inside, using the key that Tommy had given him years ago.

The rink was dark and cold and perfect. He flipped on the lights over the ice and stood for a moment at the boards, just breathing.

This was the only place he ever felt close to okay.

He laced up his skates in the empty locker room, the ritual of it soothing something in his chest. Loop over, pull tight, loop over, pull tight. His fingers knew the pattern so well he didn't have to think about it. Which was good, because thinking was what got him in trouble.

Thinking led to questions like: What am I doing here? and Is this really my life? and When did I become the guy who peaked at eighteen?

Better to just skate.

The ice was perfect, freshly resurfaced from last night's practice. Jake's first strides were slow, warming up, finding the rhythm. Then faster. Then flying, the cold air burning his lungs, his legs pumping, the sound of his blades cutting into ice the only thing in the world.

This was it. This was the thing that still made sense.

He did drills until his legs screamed: crossovers, backwards skating, tight turns around the cones he'd set up himself. Then shooting practice, whipping pucks at the empty net with precision that came from ten thousand hours of muscle memory. Top right corner. Five-hole. Bottom left. Repeat.

By 6:30, when his phone buzzed with the alarm he'd set to remind him to leave for the team breakfast, Jake had worked up a sweat and beaten back the worst of the 4 AM demons. He stood at center ice, chest heaving, and looked up at the empty seats.

Fourth round draft pick. Three seasons bouncing between the AHL and NHL, never quite good enough to stick. One shoulder injury that changed everything. Now the leading scorer on an ECHL team in his hometown, making $50,000 a year and living in a studio apartment above The Bread Basket.

A man's gotta be what he is, Shane had said.

Jake just wished he knew what that was supposed to be.

Lucy Chen's alarm went off at 4:45 AM, the same as it did every morning except Monday. She slapped it silent before it could finish its first chirp, already swinging her legs out of bed. Her feet hit the cold floor and she was moving, autopilot engaged, brain not quite online yet.

Bathroom. Splash water on face. Pull hair into a bun, secure with elastic and the pencil that lived on her bathroom counter for exactly this purpose. Brush teeth. Stare at herself in the mirror for exactly ten seconds while the toothpaste foam dripped down her chin.

Twenty-seven. Dark eyes that looked perpetually tired.

Flour on her left cheek that she must have missed when she washed her face last night.

Hair that never quite stayed in the bun, pieces already falling out around her face.

The small tattoo on her inner wrist—a whisk, her grandmother's favorite—that she touched without thinking every single morning.

Okay, she told her reflection. Let's do this.

Downstairs, The Bread Basket's kitchen was exactly as she'd left it: spotless, prepped, ready.

Lucy had learned young that preparation was everything.

Her grandmother had taught her that, back when Lucy was eight years old and barely tall enough to see over the counter.

Mise en place, Grandmother had said in her careful English.

Everything in its place before you begin.

Lucy flipped on the lights and the kitchen came alive around her.

The massive commercial oven that she'd spent $15,000 to replace three years ago.

The industrial mixer that could handle fifty pounds of dough without breaking a sweat.

The cooling racks, the prep tables, the walk-in cooler that hummed like a spaceship.

Her grandmother had opened this bakery in 1982, one year after emigrating from Taiwan.

Had built it with her own hands, learned English from customers, raised a son (Lucy's uncle) in the apartment upstairs.

Had turned The Bread Basket into a Timber Falls institution, the kind of place where everyone knew each other's orders and the smell of fresh bread was the town's unofficial morning alarm clock.

And then she'd left it all to Lucy.

Not on purpose, of course. Grandmother hadn't planned to have a stroke at seventy-two, right before Lucy was supposed to leave for culinary school in New York.

Hadn't planned to spend her last six months in a hospital bed, squeezing Lucy's hand and saying take care of it over and over until the words lost all meaning.

That was five years ago. Lucy had been twenty-two, fresh out of UVM with a business degree and a plane ticket to a life she'd never gotten to live.